Welcome to the English for change podcast, a place for you if you are an ambitious English learner who wants to build a confident voice in English so you can make positive change for yourself and the world. My name is Ruth Whittle and I am an English language teacher. Join me here each week as we explore ways you can improve your English and use your voice in English to speak about important global issues.
[00:00:33] Hello, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode where I'm going to give you four phrasal verbs to talk about challenging situations. These phrasal verbs came up in last month's english changemaker club discussion classes, where we in March, 2022, we were discussing the topic of human rights. And so we spoke about challenging situations you know, belonging [00:01:00] somewhere or talking about different, difficult ideas and issues.
[00:01:06] So, yeah, I was trying to find the best title for this podcast episode to be honest. And I was having, yeah, I was actually finding it challenging. So I was thinking, could I call this phrasal verbs for talking about being an English changemaker or phrasal verbs to talk about belonging or phrasal verbs to talk about challenging situations. And I decided on this because I think it applies to all of these ones. So I'm going to give them to you. I'm going to give examples. I'm going to give you a question so you can put it into context and you can also practice writing, responding to these questions as well. You can pause the podcast if you want, or you can come back to it. And I will also at the end, give you a few tips for learning and revising vocabulary [00:02:00] like this, because I know with phrasal verbs, it can be hard to remember them. It can be hard to use correctly it's one thing coming across a new phrasal verb and learning it for the first time. It's another thing, actually being able to use it. And sometimes it takes a few tries and a few attempts to get it right.
[00:02:22] So just to revise in case anyone doesn't know what a phrasal verb is, these are very important in English. They don't exist in every language, but a phrasal verb is basically a verb plus a particle, which is often a preposition. So a very classic one that everyone will know is to wake up in the morning. I wake up at five o'clock. No, I never do that. I wake up at eight or 9:00 AM in the morning. I get up as well, I wake up and then I get up so you can hear that wake is the verb and up is the preposition. [00:03:00]
[00:03:00] So to get into these phrasal verbs, to talk about challenging situations, the first one I'm going to give you. And I, I think you may, this is an unusual one, but it's a really good one that natives use a lot in natural conversation. And I think if you heard it without knowing what it is, you would be like, what a bottle, you know, a bottle of water, but it's actually to bottle up something.
[00:03:27] So the meaning of to bottle of something is to keep something to yourself that you don't talk about it to anyone else. It's like to keep something a secret, but really to keep something in a bottle, think about a bottle of water. You know, you don't want to share this worry this problem that you have with anyone else. So you keep it in a bottle in your head, which is usually not a very good idea. Well, I think so anyway, and I think growing up as a child, we would have been encouraged not [00:04:00] to bottle up things and to share them with our parents. Yeah to bottle up something.
[00:04:05] So here's an example. And this came, of course, as, as I say, I've said it in previous episodes, but these always come from the club. So this one came from one of the discussion classes in March where we were speaking about freedom, freedom of speech. Well, actually I wasn't, my lovely teacher was doing this class with the members. So I wasn't attending. So it's nice to share it with my fellow teacher. And she wrote this into our shared documents.
[00:04:33] So to bottle up something is, yeah, the sentence is, there are some opinions that I don't feel free to share, and I keep bottled up inside me. So there might be some opinions that I feel that I need to bottle up or also worries or problems.
[00:04:52] And so the sentence or the question in context, and I'm going to give you, and you can reflect on, you can pause the [00:05:00] podcast. You can write a few sentences to this question. It is: do you tend to bottle up your worries or problems? So, yeah, you can say yes or no. I would say no, no, I don't tend to bottle up my worries and problems. I have found the best thing for me is to share them with someone close: close member of my family, to my partner, to a friend, actually talking about worries and bottling up. I was a big worrier when I was a child, I was anxious. I worried a lot. And my mother, she came up with a solution. She found these worry dolls, and I think they are from, I was going to say Peru, but yeah, they are... oh, no Mayan. I think there are from Mayan culture. There, you can search for them online worry dolls, and they're just small little figurines.
[00:05:54] They're nothing to do with voodoo dolls or something like that, but they are [00:06:00] little dolls. You tell each one your worry, and you then put it in the bag and put it under your pillow. And then the next morning, the worry will have gone. It was a really nice idea of my mother to buy me this little bag. I think I had a few of these and I wish I still had these worry dolls. Maybe I will get some again, because this world definitely is full of uncertainty and a lot of anxiety. So there's a lot to worry about for all of us. So yeah. Do you tend to bottle up your worries and problems or how do you handle your worries and problems?
[00:06:36] That could be a good question. I don't tend to, or I tend to bottle them up and then eventually I feel so bad after not sharing them. So in the end, I have to share them with the therapist or with the good friend. Maybe that's maybe that's you. So yeah, that's the first phrasal verb.
[00:06:55] The next one is to stand up for something or [00:07:00] somebody. So I think you may have heard this one before. It's quite common and it's used a lot in talking about ideas. It means to defend or support a particular idea or a person who is being criticized or attacked. And the example I'll give is: don't let them win, stand up for yourself and what you believe. Actually that often goes together when you stand up for yourself and the things that you believe in, when you defend yourself and defend who you are as a person and what you believe in. We would talk about standing up for women, standing up for racism.
[00:07:42] Also to stand up against, standing up for is positive. So I don't stand up in support of racism. I stand up against racism. I stand up for women's rights. I stand up for black people's rights. I stand up for [00:08:00] refugees and then stand up against, stand up against the war, stand up against racism, for example.
[00:08:08] And to put this in context, I'll give you a question that you can reflect on: what causes and issues do you stand up for?
[00:08:17] So maybe there's one in particular that you really you know, engage in and really want to stand up. And when I was preparing this, I kind of saw a link between some of these phrasal verbs and I think the stand up for and the bottle up, I would link them together. So when you're learning them, I would advise you to link, to bottle up number one, and to stand up for a number two. They are not synonyms, not at all. But , I like to kind of group things together and I just think that they go, you know, the idea of bottling up your ideas and not telling anyone versus standing up for. So when you actually [00:09:00] defend something you're not bottling it up, but you know, you're not just keeping it to yourself, but you're actually taking action and standing up for, or standing up against something. So I think that's a really good idea that I just thought of now to try to link two phrasal verbs at the same time cause that can be good. Instead of just learning one, you can link them together. And in the next two, the last two that I will give you, these ones are definitely linked, but yeah, I would advise you just those two to link bottle up something and stand up for or against.
[00:09:35] Okay. And then, yeah, the third and the fourth. So this one is number three it's to fit in with something. So this means to belong, to be accepted by the other people in a group, this is really important when we're in school. You know, we face a lot of challenges growing up as a teenager in school. And of course, you know, right throughout our [00:10:00] life, as an adult, we always want to fit in, in a group. It's very important human need to feel like we belong to something.
[00:10:08] So yeah, I'm going to give you the example, so I never really fitted in at school. I was a bit different to the other people in my class. I think you can use fitted in or fit in. I never really fit in at school. Yeah. That, that sounds easier to me. I never really fit in at school. I never really fitted in at school so you can see either.
[00:10:32] So the question I want you to think about in context, you can write a few ideas down if you want to pause now: did you fit in at school? Was there anyone in your school who didn't fit in? Why didn't they?
[00:10:45] Yeah, so, so there you go. And when we were learning this in the club in March, we were speaking about visiting different countries that had very different cultures to our own and not fitting in, not feeling like we [00:11:00] belong. If we looked very different, if we dress very differently, like in a country and we were wearing the headscarf and this country didn't wear a headscarf or vice versa. So yeah. fit in with something or fit in with some kind of group with the country. Actually, a synonym for fit in is to integrate. So integration in a country to integrate in a country or to fit in. It's a good synonym.
[00:11:31] Okay. And finally, the last one is to stand out. To stand out means to be distinctive and very different from others. And really it is the opposite of fit in. So the example is she wore a red dress to school and really stood out from everyone else who was wearing black. So if you fit into a group, you don't fit in, well, then you stand out.
[00:11:58] Okay. So this is [00:12:00] the question I have in context. Write about an experience where you felt different and stood out from other people in a group. And as I said before, with the linking the two phrasal verbs together, this one is very much easier to do. It's very close. You can say that I didn't fit in at school. I stood out a lot because I was... I don't know... I was from a different country. I wasn't originally. Irish or wasn't originally from that country. And so I really stood out. I had a different accent. I looked different to the other people, so I didn't really feel like I fit in. I felt like I stood out.
[00:12:41] So I hope you enjoyed hearing these phrasal verbs. I think they're really interesting ones and really useful. They're used all the time in, I would say like informal, formal conversation. Well, in general, phrasal verbs are used informally in spoken English, but we use them as [00:13:00] well writing. It depends on the context. I wouldn't use these for academic English too much, but but yeah, very, very common.
[00:13:09] Okay. So just to round up and to finish. As I said about revising vocabulary, it is very important to have some kind of way that you record your notes. If this is a notebook that is perfect. If it's on the computer in some document in some Excel spreadsheet, that is perfect as well. And just to give you a few other ideas, There is something called spaced repetition that I've come across lately. This is the idea that you can use flashcards. Like I recommend two Anki and Quizlet. I'll link the links in the show notes. And the idea with this is you enter in your vocabulary with the meaning in your language or a synonym in English. [00:14:00] You could put an example sentence and this flashcard will test you. You can write in the meaning. You can test your knowledge, and if you are finding one word, one vocabulary, more difficult. If you're finding it more difficult, the algorithm or the app will give it to you more times so that you, you start to see it more and practice it more. And then the easier ones not showing them as often because they are more integrated into your memory, you know them, so it's a very good way of revising vocabulary. It definitely takes some time to enter this into, into Anki or Quizlet, but I think if you were initially taking notes with Excel, I think you can enter the vocabulary from Excel into the flashcards.
[00:14:54] And two other things. These are very low tech things, but I don't think we always think [00:15:00] about them or we think, you know, we need to go to a group class, or we need to go to a one-on-one class to practice English, or we need to go to English speaking country. But no, we can actually do a lot during the day if we, if we have the right focus, if we actually make the decision to do this, so two ways you could do that is to talk to yourself in English, talk in your head, or talk out loud, even better. Even if people think you're crazy, who cares? But you know, maybe you're going on a walk and instead of thinking, oh, there's a flower, there's the tree. Oh I haven't seen that shop before. What is going on here? You usually are speaking to yourself in your native language. Why don't you try it in English? This can work as well for you, even if you are a lower level, you can think of the vocabulary, you know, Try to think as much as you can. [00:16:00] And then you can go back to your native language as well, but then you can find those kinds of gaps and things where you lack and where you can go and search for those words and vocabulary. And then you're starting to build your vocabulary. You're starting to build your knowledge of English and it's going to really help you because it's the day-to-day English, the day-to-day daily language that you actually need in your personal life.
[00:16:28] The other one, which is related to this, but speaking to yourself and recording yourself in a voice message. This is a really great, really simple way. And I get a lot of my clients to do it for me. It's, you know, great for summarizing something that you've just read, like one of the questions I've given you, for example, I was saying, write about an experience where you felt different and stood out from other people. Writing about that would be great. It would be great to practice your writing skills. But often, you know, [00:17:00] speaking is the main thing that people want to improve. And you don't always get an opportunity to speak, but what is stopping you from speaking in a voice message to yourself and maybe hopefully finding someone to correct you as well to give you feedback on your pronunciation.
[00:17:16] So why don't you try that every day for a minute, two minutes and see how you get on, because it's that kind of unprepared, spontaneous speaking that you need, when you're in a real situation, when you're speaking to other people, you won't have time to prepare to search for your words. And so speaking and making a voice message is a really good way to practice that spontaneous talking.
[00:17:44] So those are my tips. And just to review the four phrasal verbs, and I'm going to put them in the show notes anyway, the first is to bottle up something which is to keep something to yourself, not talk about it to anyone else. The second was to [00:18:00] stand up for, or against something which is to defend, defend, or support a particular idea. The third is to fit in with something to belong, to be accepted by the other people in the group. And the fourth is to stand out to be different from others. Basically the opposite of, to fit in.
[00:18:19] So I hope you liked this episode and found it useful. And if you did, I would love if you could leave me a review on the podcast app app that you're listening to, I would really appreciate that and helps to get the word out so that other people can see this podcast and help them to advance their English. And thank you very much for listening and I will talk to you in the next episode.
